


i turn and burn

by firelordazulas



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:16:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7791964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelordazulas/pseuds/firelordazulas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you dress for the day, it is in black and gold. The gown is luxurious, fit for a queen. The crown is pure gold, beaten into delicate spikes.<br/>Your rule is fair and necessary, your manner warm and sweet, and your kingdom continues to thrive, to rise from Ravenna’s burning ashes. It is the fairest place of them all.<br/>The people love you now, but nothing lasts forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i turn and burn

It's a hot wind that takes you, or something similar - you fall back, back, back, into a sea of gold, a molten roiling mass that cradles you within its arms, whispers “release… me…”

and then your eyes open, arm outstretched, knees pressed on the icy floor. You are gasping, your hand reaching desperately for the mirror your body has carried you half way towards. And her voice - her voice still lingers. Her ghost haunts you, this dead woman who was so cold but so warm - you remember her disguised kiss wrapped within the feeling of her burning breast under your fist as you pushed a blade through her hot, falsely beating heart. She who took everything from you, who took and took and would have done anything to ruin your happy ending - and maybe that's all she should have been. And maybe this should have been your happily ever after. As your breath mists the air in front of you, the cloth of your nightgown torn at the knees from your frantic searching for her, you think maybe you just don't get a happy ending.

Her voice still croons silkily for you. 

Will this be the time you give in? You know you will fall. Will it be sooner or later? it's just a matter of time and oh, wouldn't that be a sweet release - 

In your daydreams, you realise you have shuffled closer. Your knees are bloody and icy from dragging them over the frosted cobble but all you can focus on is the mirror looming above you.

You look into it, imagine you can see her face.

 

When you dress for the day, it is in black and gold. The gown is luxurious, fit for a queen. The crown is pure gold, beaten into delicate spikes.

Your rule is fair and necessary, your manner warm and sweet, and your kingdom continues to thrive, to rise from Ravenna’s burning ashes. It is the fairest place of them all.

The people love you now, but nothing lasts forever.

 

A year of whispers pass. you wake with bloody knees and a hot wanting less, find solace in the prince you were meant to marry (he doesn't kiss like she does, did, will do -) and it's like an addiction you think you might've been able to kick. The silken coaxing doesn't disappear, her shadow still lingers around every corner, across every courtyard, upon every tower, but she's not there. You haven't recalled her, conjured her from the mirror in the ways your dreams show you and in the cold darkness of the night, when you think of the heat of her and yearn with every breath - that's what you cling to.

 

As with all things, darkness falls over your kingdom. There is famine and drought and plague and war. your people are dying. The trees curl, dead and yellowed. The earth thirsts for rain. A weight heavier than you can carry bears on your shoulders and the citizens that once loved and trusted you turn their backs as you struggle to push your world back into the light. The punishment is relentless. You struggle to keep taxes fair, to nurture trade without overspending, to re-adjust to the simple life you had once been so used to. You know what it is to be cold and starving. The people of your kingdom still spit at you, still think that you do nothing, and logically you know this is because they crave someone to blame. 

You continue to hold daily audiences within the throne room, even as they heckle and shout and beg for food and water. They pray to be saved. A woman raises a dying baby to your throne to be blessed - the babe is skeletal and ravaged, and as you lay a gentle kiss upon her brow, you quietly weep for what your kingdom had once been. 

An old woman kneels before you. The room goes silent. Se looks you in the eye, chants the same verse three times:

“Your wicked heart must find wicked life

"Your blood upon gold

"Your heart, freely given.”

She stands. “You will be a cleansing fire.” 

You know what it means. The answer is her. Of course it is. 

 

When you start the final walk to the mirror, your pace is sedate. She will wait for you. It will wait; it has been for 2 years, if not eternity. You are still dressed for court, with your crown proudly looped among your curls, and this small show of power feels like the most important armour you could have chosen. 

Finally, you place a bloody palm on the mirror, smear life across it's greedy, glinting maw. 

She flows like a golden sea, brushes your cheeks and arises from a wave like a lovers embrace.

You forgot how much taller than you she is, how stunning those eyes are, and it feels almost like the ending to your story you've been waiting for. Her very first move is to lay her her claws upon your heart, to pinch the skin and to take your blood from its very source, to claim what she had been promised from the very start.

“You can't hurt me, Ravenna.” 

And it becomes true. 

Her hands cradle your face, the metal talons carving the flesh of your cheeks, but your blood is not split. 

Your smile is small and beatific, warm and full of promise. “I've won, Ravenna. You cannot have my kingdom. But you can help me rule it.” 

 

Ravenna skulks through the corridors of the castle she used to have her run of. She lounges in your throne often, complains about the quality of the food, and demands a young maiden delivered to her room every 5 days. You know what she wants with the girls and you don’t allow her this. Without remorse, you watch her body atrophy, her beauty fade, as she throws things and hides within a feathered cloak.

It comes to you in a dream, what you must do. Almost in a trance, you walk to her rooms, slip into her room and to her bed. You lay a single kiss to her withered lips. You don’t touch her otherwise, do not even lay a tender hand upon her cheek, and you are gone from the room almost as soon as you had entered it.

The fire that burns within your chest, your burning, beating heart will sustain her. You know this with certainty. The creature that she had been will be cleansed from her with your own heavenly fire, and this plague will be swept from both your kingdom and your castle. You don’t know what will remain of Ravenna when you are done.

 

She lies in wait upon your throne. Her beauty has been restored entirely, her features back to perfect, her voice still that low susurration that had haunted you through long nights. Ravenna looks as if she has been carved from marble. Until her face twists with anger, in a way that you are sure most would call ugly but you find compelling, fascinating, still beautiful in its savagery. 

“What did you to me?” Her voice is a growl, her talons threaten to break the simple stone.

“I healed you. I’m purging your blood.”

“Purging? Ha! I don’t need to be purged; all I need is power, and you are too weak to seek it.”

“No, Ravenna. You have an evil inside of you.” She flows down the steps, down the dias, in a molten ride of her fury. Predictably, she grasps your face, squeezes your cheeks tightly. In return, you place a warm palm against her heart, feel the new, even beat of the muscle. “I’ve given you back your heart.”

“What need do I have of a heart! What could I possibly want with that which sets people snivelling, makes them weak and trustworthy and vulnerable?” She throws you aside in disgust - you do not fall, merely sidestep, and she begins pacing, gesturing viciously. “I am powerful; I am a witch. I have no need for such things.” 

“Your soul cries for the innocence of first love. We are bonded, you and I. I feel its longing.”

“Oh, yes, because there is so much opportunity for me to find love in this castle! Your kingdom is dying, and you want to find me a husband? I have had men; I have killed them, too. I know which gave me greater satisfaction.” 

“You have never loved. Never truly, never with the entirety of your heart, with the love and innocence of a first time.”

“That was taken from me! Everything was taken from me, by this land, by men-”

“But we are not men. Rule with me, Ravenna. Rule with me truly, at my side, as my Queen.”

“You wish to play at being in love? What about your precious Prince, what about the heir that will surely become necessary, what about your kingdom? What do you think all of this will look like once I’ve sunk my talons into it?” Ravenna advances on you, a hand going to your cheek in a parody of a lover’s carass. “Nothing like what you dream about, my darling.”

“Why do you cling to your bitterness? I’m offering you a chance at something like a happy ending; why do you continue to push me away?” You are a Queen, and a saviour, the topic of prophecy, but you cannot help the edge of impatience that makes its way into your voice. She wouldn’t allow herself to be helped, and it is exhausting.

“You’re offering the stuff of childish daydreams. Happy endings do not exist; not for us, and definitely not for me.”

Ravenna tried to turn away, now subdued and defeated, but you did not let her go. You embraced her tightly, sweetly, innocently, with the depth and breadth of your long lasting feeling. Her hands came to rest upon your shoulders. For an indefinite amount of time the two of you had stood there, in the throne room, listening to your hearts beat in synchrony.

“I do not have much of a choice, do I?” she finally whispered, “Your magic takes mine; you’ve rendered me powerless by renewing my youth.”

“It is poisoning you. Yes, the mirror brought you back to life, but the power it gives you… It requires blood. All I require is my own beating heart.”

“Where did you acquire such a gift?”

You shrug, smile. “I don’t know, exactly. Some say it was from my mother. I believe it’s yours; it’s what ties us together. You made me, after all.”

“That I did. That I did.”

 

You wrangle an agreement from her that she will come to you when her beauty starts to fade, that she won’t hunt the innocent of your lands. Nothing is said in reply to your offer. Ravenna starts to help with the running of the kingdom, giving pragmatic and ruthless advice that you consider and only ever half follow; she still doesn’t know what it is to be kind, and you forgive the cold part of her soul that refuses to thaw. The two of you start to become an established pair and the inhabitants of the castle get used to seeing you together almost constantly. Whenever you get the opportunity, you gift Ravenna with small little trinkets, things that cost nothing but she handles like precious stones; a pretty pebble you found while riding, a wild flower, anything that reminds you of her. She begins to smile at you earnestly.

Soon, she no longer ages. She remains as youthful as she had been when the two of you had first clashed, beautiful but no longer untouched marble - she confides that your sword strike had left a jagged scar that was still livid, raised but no longer burning. By no means has she become magically kind or selfless - she is still Ravenna, still hard and flinty-eyed, but now she smiles to herself when no one is looking.

 

The two of you are walking in the garden. Neither of you say a word, but your hands almost brush each other as you walk. Then, Ravenna becomes bold; she takes your hand, carefully but with a clumsiness that surprises you. It’s the way she pretends nothing has happened that makes you laugh, that makes you clasp her hand between the two of yours and set a kiss upon the back of it. 

Miraculously, out of the clear sky, rain began to fall. It fell quick and heavy and sudden, the sort of rain that soaks within seconds. You laughed, and held your hands out and spun like a child. This was the end of the drought. Your kingdom would once again prosper.

Ravenna had just watched for a minute with a soft and small smile, and then tugged you into a fierce embrace. When she had pulled back again, her hands still on your waist, yours on her shoulders, for a second she had looked at you. She just drank in the sight of you, soaked and in the rain with her. Finally, finally, she lowered her lips to yours.

“Does this mean I’ve got your heart?” You asked, quietly.

“Just as I have yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> anyway so i wrote the first like 800 words in april + the rest in a couple of hours today so ,,, rip consistent tone amirite kids who needs it i dont.
> 
> title from lady lazarus - sylvia plath


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